Another day at the dead-end hotel job. Another morning of stale cereal and cold showers. I'd grown numb to the routine - wake up on my lumpy mattress, scroll through endless notifications, rush through a five-minute shower before the hot water died. The springs poked through my mattress pad, but blankets helped. Sort of.

My phone buzzed with the usual spam: mobile game ads, "unbeatable" shoe sales that were still unaffordable, messages from online friends I barely knew anymore. Forty-five minutes until my shift started.

The morning ritual continued. Quick shower, avoiding the need to shave in ice-cold water. A bowl of cardboard-flavored cereal, eaten dry - there was a grain shortage, like there was always a shortage of something these days. The alternative was questionably expired yogurt bought off Frank, who sold what he was supposed to be tossing from the grocery store. Twenty minutes to clock in.

Spring air slapped my face as I stepped outside. The winters kept getting colder, the summers hotter. Soon I'd need a car, though I couldn't afford one. But with winters like these, I couldn't afford not to have one either. I followed the cracked sidewalk downtown, the same route I'd walked hundreds of times. Five minutes until clock in.

No one wants to admit when they're stuck. "It's temporary" and "Just until I get back on my feet" - pretty lies we tell ourselves. We grow complacent, comfortable in our misery. I was no different.

I worked four days a week at a run-down hotel, one of seven staff total. Usually alone except during shift changes and the rare full booking. Making just enough to scrape by, saving nothing, improving nothing. I told myself I was trying, but an impulse buy here, an extra soda there, and I stayed exactly where I'd started.

Our little New England town barely qualified as one - twenty thousand people, a quarter of them rotating college students. The hotel guests were mostly traveling salespeople and delivery drivers, passing through on their repetitive routes. Everyone trapped in their own comfortable rut.

When you're comfortable, you fall into habit. And when that routine changes, no one is happy. People hate change. That's why they regarded The Collective as a blight upon society. Little did they know the genuine horrors waiting beyond the doors of dream.

One minute until clock-in.